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Australian palaeontologists have found as many as four new species of seabirds - and possibly new groups of species - in a huge cache of fossils on a remote beach on the Chatham Islands.
Some of the fossils are of cormorant-like birds dating back to the late Cretaceous period - around 65 million years ago when New Zealand first separated from the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana, National Geographic magazine reported.
The fossils were revealed after storms washed sand away from a rocky platform on Maunganui Beach, where bones in sandstone deposits suggested the birds co-existed with marine and terrestrial dinosaurs.
The find had implications for the origin of modern seabirds, excavation leader Jeffrey Stilwell of Melbourne's Monash University told National Geographic.
He has sent samples to Sylvia Hope, a bird-fossil expert with the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.
The birds ranged from 30cm to over a metre tall.
- NZPA
